At this election, an owl, chinkara and tamarind are the clear winners

The aim was to promote nature conservation and inculcate a sense of pride in biodiversity.

So the villagers, whose forefathers were mainly soldiers, cast their vote in ballot boxes that were kept in secret polling booths.

Identity cards were confirmed by the polling officers who were mainly school teachers from the village and upon casting their vote, in true polling style, fingers were inked.

An election campaign that lasted for eight days had two groups – The Sun and The Moon — visiting each house to pitch for their respective candidates. The mottled wood owl had to face grey francolin for the top spot of the village icon. At the same time, among mammals, it was a battle between the chinkara and striped hyena . Among the trees category villagers had to decide between the tamarind and banyan.

A total of 610 villagers including children (from class 5 students) , teachers, homemakers and farmers dressed up in their best clothes and gathered at Ela Habitat — a field research centre for the Western Ghats and Deccan Plateau — run by the Ela Foundation to cast their votes. According to Sachin Shinde, a villager who was also part of this coordinated activity, 420 villagers voted for Owl as against 241 for the grey francolin.

Indian gazelle or chinkara garnered 470 votes vis a vis the striped hyena and tamarind was favoured by 356 villagers as against 299 who cast their vote for the banyan tree. Another 80 villagers who have settled in Pune, Mumbai and other parts of Maharashtra decided to cast their vote via an online form. The sealed ballot boxes were later opened and votes were counted in front of the student representatives and chief polling officer.

Dr Satish Pande, founder of the Ela foundation which works on nature education and conservation, told The Indian Express that after years of conservation awareness programmes – especially for owls and mammals, habitats and trees, the response to this novel election was a heartening experience.

Ela Habitat, the public outreach centre of Ela Foundation is located in this remote mountain village of Pingori and recently completed 10 years of social and conservation service. “Hence we decided to conduct this unique election,” Dr Pande said.

Dr Pande along with Rajkumar Pawar, rural outreach coordinator of Ela Foundation, soon involved all the villagers including retired soldiers, tribals, shepherds and marginalized community members to participate in the activity. “It was extremely satisfying to find that superstitious beliefs regarding the owl were set aside and the bird was elected as the village icon,” Dr Pande said.

The nature conservationist now plans to write about this unique initiative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and how if emulated across the country can help step up conservation awareness efforts.